Published : 2021 || Format : print || Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the story of her family through the other protagonist, El
"What I remember most about my own high school history classes are the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans," I said. "Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, the Trojan Horse, the elephants marching across the Alps, the sea battles, the gladiatorial contests, the chariot races, the spectacular murders and suicides, the eruption of Vesuvius. But on the other hand, also the beauty, the beauty of all those temples and arenas and amphitheaters, the frescoes, the baths, the mosaics. That's the kind of beauty that lasts forever. Those are the colors that make us prefer a holiday on the Mediterranean to Manchester or Bremen, even today."
~ Paul Lohman in The Dinner by Herman Koch,
translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett
That passage sent me on a nostalgic trip through my school days. History was definitely one of my favorite subjects at school, even though I abandoned it in High School. All those wars and conquests and kings and princesses! I can say for sure that the lessons I most enjoyed learning and even remember mostly today are those from my history classes (except, of course, all that memorizing of the dates).
How about you? Did you ever enjoy history in school?
Oh, and The Dinner? You just should. read. it. - this book is just fantabulous!
Comments
I liked history in school but I liked studying all of the explorers.
I love history...majored in it!
I didn't care for The Dinner. Too devoid of hope and redemption, I think.